Key-driven calculating machine



J. J. MORSE KEY DRIVEN CALCULATING MACHINE 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Filed Oct 5 1923 NVENTOR J. J. MORSE KEY DRIVEN CALCULATING MACHINE Filed Oct. 5. 1923 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 Cf J L VVENTOR M 4,34 TTORNE Patented Oct. 7, 1924.

UNITED STATES 1,510,951 PATENT OFFICE.

JOHN J. MORSE, OF CLEVELAND, OHIO, ASSIGNOB TO BURROUGHS ADDING MACHINE COHIANY, OF DETROIT, MICHIGAN, A CORPORATION 01 MICHIGAN.

. m-muvan CALCULATI G amounts.

Application filed October 5, 1928. Serial No. 886,883.

. T 0 all whom it may concern.

Be it known that I, JOHN J. Monsn, a citizen of the United States, residing at Cleveland, in the county of Cuyahoga and State of Ohio, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Key-Driven Calculating Machines, of which the following is a specification.

The invention relates to safe ards for key-driven calculators whereby incomplete key-action is prevented and consequent error in calculation eliminated. The particular object in view may be said to be the provision of simple, easily ap lied and reliable means for such purpose adapted to the Burroughs type of calculator. As to the latter reference may be had to Gooch Patent No.

' 1,128,679 issued February 16, 1915, Gooch Patent No. 1,150,937, issued August24, 1915, Horton Patent No. 1,156,600, issued October 12, 1915 and Horton Patent No. 1,326,504, issued December 30, 1919.; Without multiplication of parts or any complication of mechanism but by the introduction of a very few sim le arts in each numerical order I provide r ocking the registering transmission mechanism so that no additive movement thereof can take place until a key has been fully depressed. A partially depressed key becomes locked a a1nst-res-- toration. Through the same devices I provide for locking said mechanism so as to prevent re-depression of a key that has been fully depressed but has not been completely restored. Thus I effectively provide against such manipulation as the so-called pumping of a key which is sometimes practiced with the object of demonstratin defective performance of a key-driven ca culator.

In the drawings which accompany and formpart of this specification Fig. 1 represents an elevation of on ordinal section of one of these machines with my invention incorporated therein and all parts shown at normal, somebe'ing broken away to economize space or better disclose parts beyond; Fig. 2 is a detail elevation on a larger scale showing the normal state of certain arts b Y which the invention is embodied; i 3 1s agslmilar view showing the abnorma state of-the same parts; Fig. 4 is across-section" taken substantially on the line 44 of Fig. 1; 'Fig. 5 is a detail perspective of one of the parts ofmy invention; Fig. 6 is a sectlonal plan view taken substantially on the line 6-6 of Fig. 7; and Fig. 7 is an elevation similar to F i 1 of the front portion of the machine un er a condition corresponding with that illustratedin Fig. 3.

I shall first refer to some of the familiar mechanical elements ofthe machine with which those parts supplied by my invention are more intimately related. The stems of the numeral keys are designated 2 and they operate upon a horizontal lever 3 that is pivoted at its rear end to the forward corner of a triangular lever 4 and is connected at its forward end by a link 5 with a-bar 6. The latter is pivotallyconnected at its rear end to the upper corner of the triangular lever 4 and at its forward end to a gear segment 7. It has stop shoulders 6 to strike against the key stems and so limit the.

movement of the actuator elements in accordance .with the key-Values. Depression of a ke drives downwardly the lever 3, rocking t e triangular lever 4 forwardly and thrusting the bar 6 forwardly and so swingin the gear segment 7 in a counterclockwise direction. The latter is in mesh with a pinion 8 carrying a driving pawl 9 (Fig. 2) which engages an internal ratchet 10 of a gear wheel 10.

may be seen in the Horton Patent No.

In order to prevent the driving and driven members from getting out of step or the driven member from over-runnin a notched disc 13 is secured to the driving pinion 8, and the. ratchet ear wheel 10 meshes witha pinion 14 whic carries a mutilated pinion or toothed disc 15. This exdient is the sub'ect of the said Gooch atent No. 1,150,923 and as there explained the notched disc and mutilated inion are so related that in clockwise rotation of the former (caused by depression of a key) it moves independently of the mutilated pinion, passing freely through the s ace between two of the latters teeth.

' (throu h describe notched disc rotates counterclockwise (dur-.

ing the rise of the depressed key) the toothed disc or mutilated pinion is rotated clockwise the intermeshing of the driven gear w eel 10 and the pinion M), the teeth of the mutilated pinion successively interwith the notches of the disc 13.

my novel key control to the justpreventive means which readily lend themselves to the accomplishment of my purpose. Thus l mount upon a frame cross-rod 16 (located 'ust above the pinions it, 15) a double-acting pawl and detent piece which appears in all at the figures oi the drawings and is separately shown in perspective in Fig. 5. lit will be seen to comprise a pendent branch 1'? with a forwardly turned lower end to coact with the toothed disc 15, and an upper forwardly extending branch lid with a down-turned nose overhanging the notched disc 13.. In order to best provide for pivotal mounting of this piece it is made in yoke form horizontally, as best seen in Fig. 5, the sides of the yoke bein perforated to afford spaced pivotal bearings for the piece upon the frame crossen aging pp y rod 16. The cross bar 19 of theyoke has the numeral he s, from which it follows that a ivision an lip-standing ear to which one end of a spring 20 is attached, the other end of said ipring being attached .to a frame stud 21.

t will be seen that this spring tends to throw the nose of the pawl 18 against the periphery oi the notched disc 13. The spring is normally restrained from so acting by reason of the engagement of a stud. 22

with thc'back of the pendent detent 17, as shown in Figs. land 2, which also results in the holding of the bent end of the latter in the path of one of the teeth of the mutilated pinion 15. This condition obtains throughout the downstroke of any one of clockwise turnm of the latter will be prevented and no riving of the ratchet gear wheel 10 by the awl 9 can occur. Hence release of a partia y depressed key cannot result in transmission 0 movement to the registering wheel.

The aforesaid stud 22 is carried by the up or arm 23 of a leverwhich lies against late 24 of the framework and 1s pivoted t ereto at the middle, as shown at 25. The lower arm 26 of this vertically dis osed lever is recessed in its forward edge an there engaged by the pivot stud 27 that connects the riving se ment 7 andthe horizontal bar 6, said stu projectin through winner plained. The lower end of the said vertically disposed. lever takes the form of a substantially square lug which normally occupies the complementally formed notch of a long latch lever 30. The latter is pivoted at its rear end to the said division plate as shown at 29 and extends forwardly along the same and adjacent the entire series of lceys. It has a depending goose-neck formation. 30 at the front end where the aforesaid notch is provided. The latch lever is upheld by a spring 31 connecting it with the division late and it is held against the latter by a ended stud 3-2 which is embraced by a notch termed in the latch lever as shown in Figs. l and 7. The latch lever has a series of stepped and graduated shoulders 33 designed to be struck respectively by the lateral lugs 37 oi the hey stems, which lugs occupy oiding slots in the division plate, as usua When any depressed key reaches the end of its downstrolre its lateral lug will strike and depress the latch lever thereby releasing the vertically disposed lever. Meanwhile the segment stud 27 will have advanced in the guide slot 28 so that the spring 20 will-rock the pawl and detent piece and disengage its detent piece 17 from the toothed disc 15, the lever 23-26 turning clockwise on its pivot. Thus the transmission mechanism will be unlocked so that upon the rise of the fully depressed key the registerin function of the machine will be performed 1n the usual manner.

Passing to the matter of a safeguard against rte-depression of a key that has been fully depressed but not permitted to fully restore, the above described rocking of the pawl and dctent piece by its spring throws the nose of its upper member 18 against the periphery oi the notched disc 13 so that when the latter turns counterclockwise its notches will successively slip past the pawlnose but any reverse (clockwise) turning of said disc while the detent piece is so conditioned will result in the pawl-nose jam ming between the upper side of a notch of the disc and the point of a tooth of the Inuto again depress it, for the detent piece remains conditioned as above explained until the driving segment 7 completes its return stroke as permitted by the full rise of the depressed key. The result is that the key is locked against re-depression until permitted to complete its upstroke.

segment 7 completes its return stroke its stud 27 rocks the lever 23-26 and the detent iece is forced to its normal osition. The atch lever 30, having been d dpressed at the very end of the down-stroke of the key will correspondingly be released at the As the lows that if the key beginning of the upstroke of the key but, with the Vertically disposed lever in its abnormal position, the terminal edge of the goose-neck will strike against the bottom edge of the vertically disposed lever, and then when the latter is rocked to its normal position the latch lever will be further lifted by its spring so that its notch re-engages with the said lever.

In order that a partially depressed key may be prevented from rising and may thus indicate to the user that an incomplete operation has been performed, I provide for coupling each key to the actuating lever 3. To this end the feet 2' of the key stems which closely overliethe upper edge of the actuating lever 3 and impart motion to said lever, are made with holes 2, and the lever is made with forwardly-turned hooks 3 to entersaid holes, respectively. These hooks stand closely adjacent the rear sides of the respective key-stems as shown in Fig. 1, so that as soon as depression of any key starts and its foot acts upon the lever 3, with the result of swinging the latter forward as well as downward, the hook will enter the hole and the key stem will be coupled to the lever as illustrated in Fig. 7 Consequently the key cannot rise independently of the lever and since the lever will be blocked against rising so long as the detent piece obstructs the mutilated pinion, it folis only partly depressed and then released, it will remain in depressed position. Of course if .the key is fully depressed it will rise with the lever and as the upstroke is completed will become disengaged from the coupling hook, and the key will be lifted slightly oh the lever by its own spring 34.

On zeroizing when the numeral wheels turn backward, as explained in said Horton Patent No. 1,326,504, the ratchet gear wheels 10 must be free to turn counterclockwise and the pinions 14 and 15 correspondingly clockw se, and so the special detents for compelling full key-strokes should not be in their normal obstructing relationship to said pinions. All that is required in this regard is to so proportion and so laterally relate the bent ends of the detents 17 to the teeth of the mutilated pin ions 15 as to provide for removal of the latter from the planes of the detents when the pinions are shifted laterally in a zeroizing operation. As fully shown and described in said Horton patent, the pinions are slidable upon a transverse shaft which is itself laterally shiftable and is so shifted in a zeroizing operation as to take the mutilated pinions out of line with the notched discs. Coiled springs surrounding the shaft hold the pinions in pro er position thereon. In the accompanying drawings the corresponding shaft is deslgnated and the particular one of the coiled sprin s appearing in Fig. 6 is designated 36. v, e bent ends of the detents 17 are made sufficiently narrow and so related to the mutilated pinions that the lateral shift of the latter in a zeroizing operation takes them out of line with the detent.

It will be seen that the construction above described accomplishes the object primarily stated herein. At the same time it is to be understood that my invention is'not neces sarily limited to the precise form of embodiment here shown, nor to use only as adapted to the selected make of calculator.

I claim:

1. In a machine of the class described,

the combination. with registering mechanism, depressible keys, actuators, transmis sion mechanism including driving and driven members, and means for keeping said members in step; of devices applied to said means normally blocking additive movement of the driven member, with provisions for unblocking at the end of the downstroke of a key and for interposing an obstruction against redepression of such key prior to completion of its upstroke.

2. In a machine of the class described, the combination with registering mechanism, depressible keys, actuators, transmission mechanism including driving and driven members, and means for'keeping said members in step; of devices applied to said means normally blocking additive movement of the driven member, with provisions for unblocking at the end of the downstroke of a key and for interposing an obstruction against redepression of such key prior to completion of its upstroke; and also provisions for coupling the key to the actuator fromthe time the key starts down to the time it completes its return stroke 3. In a machine of the class described, the combination with registering mechanism, depressible keys, actuators, and transmission mechanism including driving and driven members; of a single detent piece adapted under a normalsetting to block the driven member and under a different setting to block the driving member, and means for changing the setting of the detent piece upon completion of the down-stroke of a key, with comp etion of the upstroke of the key.

. 4. In a machine of the class described, the combination with registering mechanism, depressible keys, actuators, and transmis sion mechanism including driving and driven members; of a single detent piece adapted under a normal setting to block the driven member and under a different setting to block the driving member, a spring for shifting the detent piece, and a latch normally restraining the spring and adapted to be displaced by a key as the provisions for resetting the piece upon deprcssihle lieys, actuators, and transmission mechanism including driving and driven members; of a single rocking detest piece adapted under a normal setting to block the driven member and under a ditfercnt setting to block the driving member,

a spring for shitting the detent piece, a lever engaging the latter and normally held by the actuator, and a latch engaging the lever and adapted to he displaced by a key as the same completes its downstrohe, with provisions for maintaining the unlatched condition until the key completes its upstroke.

6. In a machine of the class described, the combination with registering mechanism, depressihle keys, actuators, transmission mechanism including driving and driven members, a notched disc on the driving member, and a toothed disc geared to the driven member; of a rocking detect and pawl piece one branch of which normally intercepts a tooth of the toothed disc and the other branch of which is adapted to engage the notched disc, a spring applied to the said piece for efiecting the latter engagement, and means controlled by the keys and the actuator for normally restraining the spring whereby after movement of the actuator by key depression and upon completion of the downstrolre ol the hey the detent and pawl piece will be released and disengaged from the toothed disc and engaged with the notched disc.

Z. In a machine of the class described, the combination with raring mechanism, depressible keys, actuators, transmission mechanism including driving and driven members, a notched disc on the driving member, and a toothed disc geared to the driven member; of a roofing detent and pawl piece one branch of which normally intercepts a tooth of the toothed disc and the other branch of which is adapted to engage the notched disc, a spring applied to the said piece for efiecting the latter engagement, a lever engaged on one side of its pivot with the said piece and. on the nism, depressible lreys, an actuator lever and segment, transmission mechanism including driving and driven members, a notched disc on. the driving member, and. a toothed disc geared to the driven member; of a rocking detest and pawl piece one branch oi which normally intercepts a tooth of the toothed disc and the other branch of which is adapted to engage the notched disc, a spring applied to the said piece for efi'ectingthe latter engagement, a lever engaged onone side of its pivot with said piece and on the other side of its pivot by the actuator se ment, and'a latch engaging said lever an operated upon by a key as the same completes its downstroke. a

9. In a machine at the class described, the. combination of an actuator lever having hook formations, depressihle keys with holes confrontin the latter and adapted to he entered there upon movement of the actuator lever by the keys, registering mechanism, transmission mechanism including driving and driven members, detent means ing the driven member, and means for removing the obstruction upon completion of be entered thereby upon movement of the actuator lever by the keys, registering mechanism, transmission mechanism including driviu and driven members, a toothed disc geare to the driven member, a rocking detent normally interce V disc, a lever normally old by the actuator and holding the detent in such intercepting position, and a latch engaging said lever and operated upon by a key as the same completes its downstroke.

JOHN J. MORSE.

ting a tooth of said associated therewith rind normally obstruct- 

